IMF working paper measures stablecoin inflows and spillovers to foreign exchange markets

What happened

IMF Working Paper 2026/056 analysed stablecoin flows across borders and their relationship to exchange rate movements in emerging and developing economies. The authors characterised the effect as opening the dollar door while speeding the exit: dollar stablecoins widen access to dollar balances in countries with restricted foreign exchange, and the same rails make it faster to move capital out when confidence falls. The paper reported that cross-border stablecoin flows have surpassed the cross-border flows of Bitcoin and Ether, making stablecoins the principal channel through which digital assets interact with the balance of payments rather than a secondary one. The work follows earlier IMF commentary flagging stablecoins as a source of risk for emerging markets, and it supplies quantitative estimates where prior discussion had been largely descriptive. As a working paper it represents the authors' analysis rather than official IMF policy.

Why it matters

This is the central macro question for stablecoins in emerging markets, and it now has measurement behind it. If dollar tokens reliably amplify outflow episodes, central banks in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and comparable economies face a policy choice between capital-flow measures that are hard to enforce on public networks and accepting a faster transmission of dollar demand into the exchange rate. It also complicates the development case. The same instrument that reduces remittance and trade payment costs, which is measurably valuable in economies where the average cost of sending $200 exceeds 8%, is the instrument that shortens the fuse on currency runs. Policy that captures one effect without the other has not yet been designed anywhere.

What is not settled

Working papers do not represent IMF policy; the paper's country coverage and the size of estimated effects for individual African currencies are not summarised in secondary reporting.